Saturday, August 21, 2010

Thanks to my friend who had got an awesome project in some more awesome company in other state. I got to use his bike.

Alok "buzzed" me and gave me the most unbelievable piece of news today!

“ Fresh“ Movies are now practically available on out E- Library! That was some news. Like an owl I spent the entire morning admiring the direction skills and talent of the Actors.

Very soon I realized that my eyes were popped up because of sheer lack of sleep, but it was too late to go to sleep. It was 4.30 am. And my FIRST DAY of Internship.

Considering the Facebook admirers and Orkut fan following, I thought I was too decent to go in a rugged look and messy hair. Morning business didn’t take long as me and my friend were up and ready to face the day. Thus started the long drive from campus to the office which was solid 18 km.

Negotiating the steep curves and heavy traffic, I was already good 5 min late. As I entered, I saw a young fair lady sitting round the corner. Confidently I approached her. She checked the time and stared at me. All I was sure that it was a death look. She asked me and my friend to go inside the adjoining room. My manager was waiting inside. We gulped some water and entered the hall.

Smartly dressed, this young manager was at his best. Right from word go he started firing. Firstly my greeting style, then my dressing sense, later my rugged look and at the end my smirk. I had to get rid of all this before I could be accepted in the organization. Fat the wuck?? But it was matter of job, so I submitted myself. Next 3 hours went in going through company’s documents and later introduction with entire staff. The day ended at around 6pm.Sadistically satisfied with my first day, I was on my way back to room.

I did not realize how these 2 months passed by. I was a better organizer, better presenter, highly tanned considering the field work thought the day and have better nick of business by end of this tenure. I think the first day correction got me back on tracks. I realized that the corporate world is taxing and very little margin of error.

I have had my own share of fun. I have had Hippies sleeping on the bench around me. Sometimes we used to step out in rain and dance with and little chaps carrying tea who appear out of blue. This was the ultimate evidence of all the crazy antics we freak heads did. While the others were busy studying and preparing to run the world, we just created chaos in the real world. My only regret: never got the hot potatoes

So anyway what does an aspiring MBA do while he is supposed to do cold calling and visit prospects? Well after the initial work, he heads to a sugar factory, gulps fermented cane juice and makes his friends life as miserable as possible till they both park their bottoms “up” and goes for a deep slumber in plush lawns of some local university.

As the cold breeze blew across I couldn't but help think about the quirky fans from our class rooms, which we always rely upon in those hot summers. If you had the power to mute the sound, you could have a nice siesta.

I had suddenly started missing my college and friends. There were hardly few of us on campus during summers.

I missed my class and its ambience. A normal B school grad has a genetically programmed response when he sees case study. U apply 4 P’s, 5 W’s and X Ill-Logics and you are done. Some are so desperate that they feel like taking his clothes off and taking a victory lap before the suicidal plunge.

I missed my Gmail groups which were clean, otherwise flooded with (S)Craps. Extensive brainstorming happens over the official Google groups by CR’s about how some professors should be deprived of his sadist satisfaction of watching we students go bonkers over a case next morning.

I miss those parties which were planned at spur of moment. Some parties are worth the fun. You get to rub your belly with a kick ass lass of your senior/ junior batch, pour drinks on plunged parts intentionally and yet escape because..Poor chap..You are accidently Drunk and don’t know what you are doing. Bullshit!! Bugger must have planned about this coup in his wild fantasies every night.

My food options were less through the year-mostly because 1.I was broke and 2. I didn’t have a vehicle. It means that I had to swallow 3 meals either in the college mess or something my hot pan could prepare. Maggi, macroni and anything boilable was on the platter.

The average health status of the batch was demonstrated simply by all the bellies slimmed and biceps popping out through drenched T-shirts. Unfortunately, there was hardly a“femme” to scream “ wow” s for them. Poor guys.

All good things have to end – unfortunately, my tale also.

My bike meter stood good 2400 km in some 45 days approximately.

These 2 months taught me many things. The long rides, intensive field visits and understanding the organization. The entire staff was very cooperative and open to suggestions and discussions. I got to implement what I thought and test it. What more could a summer intern expect of a firm? The fun element was never missed. It was as if the happy days were over. But my manager made me realize that the coming days were the most meaningful days of my life.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

11 pm yesterday night was quite a shock. I was woken up from my Facebook siesta by loud music and rampant slogans. Vande Mataram and Jai Hind were memorized. Small groups started moving in the corridor and cheering for India with full Josh.

Independence day was here.

Suddenly a clutter of online space was jammed with independence day's messages and status updates. Patriotic Videos and speeches were exchanged. Some news channels flashed scenes across prominent locations in metros about how the youth of India was Celebrating its Independence day. Mandals and Chowks were being decorated for flag hoisting.

Suddenly the camera shifted to some youths helping an old aged man cross the road and providing some snacks and water. The whole group got some old cloths and gifted them to him so that he could protect himself from the chilling night. May be it was an unseen India for him. He was so overwhelmed that tears started rolling down from his cheek. The young brigade continued their quest of decorating the street after this incident.

I was very moved by this event. The concept of " Seasonal Patriotism" had a new meaning now in my mind. We do not fail to remember our heroes who won us independence and give them due respect every year on the designated day. But when we do it, we get to see some extraordinary events like this.

Had you imagined possibility of such kindness showered on a street player on a normal day when the whole world is hardly bothered to find whats happening in their own house, forget about people on street. The world moves as if a day comprises of 12 hours instead of 24. Friends meeting and talking to relatives is a distant dream in today's world.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

First thing you notice about a Sunday is.. It’s supposed to be a holiday. But guess cosmos had seen my face book profile and cursed me for partying hard for last few days in the rains of lavale.

Bang!! I get a mail Saturday night that I have an elective class scheduled @10 am.

FTW?? Sunday effeed up?

Holy Cow.. yes.. “That was the Sunday that was”.

Thanks to the news paper guy, I get to see my fav actresses and try to make sense of ongoing business scenario. Finally P&G had showcased their mysterious shampoo which HUL had already taken case of. Wonder how some companies get such dreams. Poor coach of some country was scared to death because his team had not performed well in an international tournament. Hope he doesn get hanged. Scrolling ahead I found that some channel hadproperly interviewed a high official about to be happening CW games. Had got some tweets about the pattern of interaction happening the day before. Next I turned to the supplement. Was refreshed to see some new faces and better variant of “ what to use “ to play safe. That too in new flavor.

My friend had got a belt for me as my other belt’s owner was apparently behind me to return. Poor boy. Wonder why people have to fight so much to claim something which is theirs.

It has been almost a week that god has been kind to read daily news papers and tweet about water scarcity in Pune. He was so disturbed that he said “ Guys, I m going on vacation for a week. Tap will be on. Store as much as u can”. Felt good to see sunrise after many days.

Ever heard of “Aloo Parotha” without the stuffing in it? Well meet me and I will treat you. I know a place where you get the best of this kind.

On my way to class I encountered another interesting scene for second time in this week. I wonder what rain brings on to this campus. We get to see weird creatures trying many postures with known creatures, and there are always few dogs watching this heavenly “Tandav”. Last time I had seen a grass hopper running behind a frog and few dogs watching. Someone please hand them an induction manual.

As this was the first elective class, I was not quite excited. But I regret this. It was a happy ending to the class. Details can be discussed in private.

Knowing that afternoon will be boring, I decided to catch an action flick in the city. But devil save me, it started raining again. Plan cancelled. I was back in my room again.

I opened up my laptop and saw a creature similar to me smiling shamelessly at me. I was so irritated; I took off my snap and put some decent well dressed pout lipped hippie. Guess the comp also liked it and reacted immediately with a system restore. Even technology has emotions.

As always, few take aways

1.Get up early, you never wanna miss a hot cup of tea in this rain.

2.Use mouth freshener, you may end up sitting next to a girl on breakfast table.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Pardon me if I have got things wrong. The comments section under this is waiting to hear your outbursts.All I m attempting to do is apply 4p’s of marketing to a company called Google. The idle mind has taken a toll on me and no wonder I am coming up with this.

Google has become a house hold name. I won’t have 2nd thoughts even if I say that people have replaced the word ‘Search’ with ‘Google’. We get to hear the words like “Google’ it yaar more often now a days.

As we all know the 4 p’s of marketing are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Let’s try applying it to Google now.

Product: Google offers services as a form of it product to its customers. The products Google offer fall into industrial products i.e Google’s’ business products offer services to their customers. Things like advertising, providing their search technology to solve companies’ search problems within their office etc. They also sell something called as tangible items along with its service or make hybrid offers by selling “pure” products.

The three categories in which Google classifies their products are Advertising solutions, Business Solutions, and the Google Store. AdWords come in their Advertising solutions .Google offers text-based ads that are precise to the search on the site of the user and the customers pay Google every time internet search users click on their site. They help in increasing volume of visitors to the customer site’s hence setting up client’s site.

Well, Google has many products. Right from its search engine, G talk, analytics to Picasa. Google Store sells items such as shirts, notebooks, bags, caps etc to almost anything that they can print their company’s name on.

Place: Google’s place is the internet. No one does it better than Google when it comes to target their consumers, the people on the Internet. Google introduced the language limit in April 2000 with eleven languages. It was expanded as of Aug. 2000 to 24. As of July 2001, Russian was added. In Nov. 2001, Arabic and Turkish and then in early 2002 Catalan, Croatian, Indonesian, Serbian, Slovak, and Slovenian joined the group for the following 34 language limit options. These are available on the Advanced Search page and their Language Tools page. This shows that immaterial of any place across the globe, Google’s presence is felt.

With the intrusion of internet and 3g spectrum coming over to India, we can virtually see Google penetrating many households.

Price: Google’s price for AdWords is set on the amount of advertisement per day it provides its consumers. In Google’s case the list price is at five cents per day, however it can go as high as $50.00 per day. The price difference will depend on the amount of advertisement per day that the consumers are willing to pay and the amount of times individuals click to see the ads and how high these ads rank on a search page.

Apparently no price is charge to a normal user.

Promotion: Despite emerging onto the platter later than others, Google has risen to outdo all of its competitors becoming what is now the most popular Internet search engine. Google offers a minimal homepage and several people like the fact. It loads immediately without annoying advertisements. Lycos and AltaVista advertise heavily and load their homepage with flash. It takes a lot of time. People seem to like Google more because of its simple and direct approach. As a result of Google’s outstanding results it has compelled its dedicated users, using WOM (Word of mouth) to inform everyone else about their remarkable search engine. Google’s growth is proof of the power of viral marketing, without the need for massive advertising budgets. Recently, Google launched a new website called “Froogle,” which is a product search. Froogle is a separate site from Google. When Froogle was first introduced, Google did not display an advertisement or a link to Froogle. Rather, they relied on providing a quality free service and backing it with good public relations.

The Road ahead???

Google knows better.

All they have is the product part which they can constantly improve i.e by continue doing what they are doing so well and that is indexing and rating billions of web pages every day better than other search engine companies in this world.

An interesting fact shared by our prof is that the work break up of an employee at Google is as follows:

So with this 50-30-20 outlook we can definitely see great work atmosphere at Google.

The world is going green. Google has to take care of its CSR activities and align them to the shift in the global trend. And the result??

They came up with lifting up of the huge data centers and storing them on ships!!! That’s true. This will help them to reduce the costs and keep the Green peace activists at bay.

The concept of reverse innovation may be applied where in they prepare a plan to kill one of their own products and find out ways about how to survive in such case. This way they will be prepared for an onslaught from market before hand and better prepared to handle the crisis.